


Enough for Now

by SylvanWitch



Category: S.W.A.T. (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Fuck Or Die, Homophobia, Hopeful Ending, It's probably as hard to read as it seems from these tags, M/M, Racist Language, Rape, Rape Aftermath, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:20:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22622428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Hondo takes Street on an easy assignment hoping to sand off some of the kid's rough edges.  He should have been careful what he wished for.
Relationships: Dan "Hondo" Harrelson/Jim Street
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	Enough for Now

**Author's Note:**

> I got seven episodes into S.W.A.T. before deciding it wasn't for me, but this idea came out of nowhere and insisted on being written. It's ugly and hard to read, but it's also about hope and the first steps on the long road to healing. Please be kind to yourself and give it a pass if violence, sexual violence, etc., will hurt you.

It was supposed to be a milk run: Meet with the CI, get the intel, get back to the unit to figure out what to do with it.

That’s why Street came along. The kid’s rough edges were still catching on the team’s otherwise smooth dynamics, and Hondo hoped he’d be able to sand some of those edges off if he could spend some one-on-one time with him.

He should have been careful what he wished for…

The CI was dead when they got there, throat slit, tongue sticking out of the gaping wound.

“Colombian neck-tie,” Street said, as if he saw ruthless drug gang tactics every other day. 

Hondo, who was usually irritated by the kid’s bravado, was relieved in this case. He didn’t want to have to worry about Street losing his cool.

Turned out Street was going to lose a lot worse before the day was over.

*****

They’d come out from behind rusted machinery and down from the rafters, seven guys in balaclavas and black tactical uniforms carrying military-grade automatic rifles and bad attitudes.

Hondo wasn’t given to hollow theatrics, so he gave up his guns and knife when they told him to.

Street hesitated seconds longer than he should have and got a rifle butt to the back of his head for his trouble. He went down to his knees with a groan, and one of the crew made a crack about how pretty he looked down there, and that’s when Hondo knew they were in real trouble.

*****

Hondo had taken his share of beatings over the years, so he knew his threshold. He was pretty sure he could hold out indefinitely, as long as they didn’t start removing parts he’d need later.

But Street wasn’t as conditioned to the irregular, insidious rhythm of bait-and-switch three guys on the crew were playing with him, and he was starting to look wild-eyed, like he might be finding out something about himself he hadn’t expected to ever learn.

“You could make it easy on him,” the crew leader, a guy Hondo had taken to calling Asshole One in his head, said. “Just order him to do it. It’ll be on you, then. He can pretend he wasn’t gagging for it all along.”

The thought of Street on his hands and knees taking what Hondo could give him might, in other, very specific, circumstances have given him some visceral pleasure.

These circumstances were nowhere near the locker-room fantasies Hondo had indulged on rare occasions, however, and though he made it a point to stay out of his team members’ business, he was confident that he hadn’t figured anywhere in Street’s wet dreams.

None of that mattered now.

Now, Street was gasping, drool and blood streaming from his lips, cheek split, livid marks rising on his neck, where the biggest on the team—Tiny Dick—had held him in place so his kidneys could get in some quality time with Pencil Neck’s fists.

“Enough,” he said as Street’s eyelids fluttered closed.

At Hondo’s word, Street’s eyes flew open, and he made a choked-off sound of denial before Grab-Ass (Hondo’s least favorite flunky) slapped Street across the face and said, “Save your moaning for the show.”

Ice sluiced through Hondo’s gut and acid climbed his throat. He wasn’t sure he could do it, not with Street looking at him like he’d just betrayed him.

The guy holding Street up dropped him, and Street slumped to his knees, swaying, eyes losing focus. Hondo wrenched out of the hold Little Hands had on him and rushed to brace Street, saying, “Hey, look at me,” as quietly as he could, trying desperately to block out the knowing snickers and lewd noises the crew was throwing at them.

“Street,” Hondo said, putting some steel into it, and Street straightened up, still kneeling but mostly conscious.

Hondo took his hands away, putting them out to his sides, low, like he was a gunslinger in an old-fashioned Western, preparing to draw.

“If you say no, it’s no.” 

Behind him, someone hawked up a wad, the yellow pile landing in a gleaming ooze on the concrete floor beside Street’s left knee.

“You’ll need some slick,” Asshole One sneered, and Hondo shook his head at Street, who’d tightened his jaw and clenched his fists, like he was going to come up off the ground and crack some skulls.

“Ignore them,” Hondo said in his hostage negotiator’s voice. “Look at me. Are you saying no, Street?”

They’d both die if Street said no; the kid had to know that. But what Hondo knew was that there wouldn’t be much to live for if he did this without the kid’s consent, for whatever ‘consent’ was worth under the circumstances.

“Whatever you say,” Hondo confirmed, holding Street’s gaze.

Street shrugged, put on a wobbly smirk, and said, “I usually like dinner first, maybe a movie, but yeah, okay.”

Something clenched in Hondo’s gut, then. They were going through with it, here on a filthy warehouse floor in front of seven vicious witnesses who’d give them no mercy and were probably going to kill them anyway.

“They’ll come,” Hondo said, more movement of his mouth than sound, and Street nodded, the tiniest downward motion of his chin, to indicate he’d heard.

It was the only reason to put themselves through what came next.

“You got this?” Asshole One barked, and Hondo’s eyes tracked to Little Hands, who was holding his phone up, camera’s eye pointed right at him and Street.

“No,” Hondo said instinctively, knowing even as it came out that it was the wrong play, not sure he could have stopped the denial regardless.

Pencil Neck slapped him hard in the back of the head, said, “Do it, boy, you know you want to. Look at this pretty face,” grabbing Street by the jaw and shaking his head back and forth with it. “Bet you never got vanilla trim so sweet before.”

“Easy,” Hondo said, keeping his eyes on the kid, who looked like he was going to do something deeply fatal any second now.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Street drawled, dropping an exaggerated wink and leering like a porn star at him.

Hondo picked up on Street’s desperation, though, the fear in the back of his eyes that was fueling his bravado, which was getting thinner every moment they delayed.

“Get on with it,” Asshole One growled, and Street nodded again, this time more definitely, and moved his hands to his fly.

“Nuh-uh,” Tiny Dick said. “We want to see it all.”

“Jesus, Petey, no we fuckin’ don’t. Goddamn, we’re not actual fact faggots, fer Christ’s sake,” whined Grab-Ass.

Hondo shrugged like he could get with whatever program they settled on and went for his own fly. If the kid was going to be half-naked on his knees, Hondo wasn’t going to leave him there alone. They’d do every step together or not at all. If either of them were going to come out of this even halfway to okay, that’s the way it had to be.

So he caught and held Street’s eyes, telegraphing his next move, which was to open his pants and pull them and his boxer briefs down, so he was mooning the assholes behind him and flashing Street full-frontal, his cock flaccid—not a surprise, given his complete horror at the whole situation—but still evidence of what was happening to them both.

Street’s eyes widened when he saw what Hondo was doing, but he swallowed hard and followed his lead, undoing his pants and pulling them and his briefs down. There, he seemed to freeze, breath going shallow, throat bobbing convulsively.

Hondo would have bet the kid didn’t know he was shaking his head back and forth in denial.

“Street, look at me. Look at me, kid.”

But Street was seeing something five minutes into the future, eyes fixed on imagining what was about to happen.

“Hey, Street,” Hondo said, reaching out and touching his cheek.

While the asshole crew howled with derisive laughter and anatomically impossible suggestions, Street jerked and then reset, eyes fixing on Hondo’s and seeing him.

“It’s okay,” Hondo said. “It’s just you’n me here. That’s all. Just you’n me.”

“Boss, I don’t think I can do this.”

“’s okay, Street,” Hondo assured him, kneeling down so they were closer and so Hondo’s shoulders blocked Street’s view of the guys behind him.

“One step at a time is all,” he went on, moving his hands to Street’s still-clothed shoulders, pressing a little to let him feel the weight of his touch.

Street swallowed hard, breathing still too rapid for Hondo’s liking, but he tightened his jaw and through his clenched teeth said, “Just do it,” before shuffling around and dropping to his hands and knees.

The howls were hard to ignore, but Hondo had a bigger problem than their audience: There was no way he was going to get hard like this, and he had a feeling if he didn’t get with the program in a hurry, Asshole One was going to come up with a more creative way to humiliate them.

Hondo might survive that, but he didn’t think Street would, and he’d be damned if he was going to let them hurt the kid more than they already were.

Taking a deep breath, Hondo closed his eyes and shuffled closer to Street, first splaying his hand between Street’s shoulder blades, riding out the inevitable startled shiver from him, and then slid his hand down to the small of Street’s back, letting it rest there, not petting, just letting him know he was there, suggesting what was coming next.

By degrees, Street dropped his head and then, slowly, lowered himself onto his elbows.

Someone hooted, someone else made a remark about Street’s pert ass, but Hondo kept his eyes closed, feeling the heat of the kid’s skin through his shirt—the crew had taken their tac vests before the beatings had started—centering on that heat, the strength of the body under his hand and the fine trembling there, too.

“It’s okay,” he lied, opening his eyes and leaning so he could cup his free hand in front of Street’s face.

“Spit?” he asked, and Street shuddered but did as he was told.

Saliva was a terrible lubricant, but it was all they were going to get, and Hondo closed his eyes again, blocked out the vile derision pouring over them, and focused on the body under his hand and the feel of his wet palm stroking his cock.

Beneath him, Street shivered and muttered, “Just do it.”

Hondo felt his cock filling and loathed himself. He’d had a coach in eighth grade who’d told them that erections were nothing to be ashamed of, just “hydraulics,” a machine response to certain stimuli. 

It had helped him then as he’d navigated the treacherous waters of puberty.

Mechanics might be helping Hondo get hard, but they were doing nothing to relax Street, and when Hondo began working a finger into him, trying to make it easier for him later, Street bucked and shuddered and made a sound back in his throat that Hondo could hear even over the increased jeers of the crew ranged in a half-circle around them.

“Easy,” Hondo murmured, leaning down over Street’s back, offering him cover and a little body heat and what scant comfort there was to give. He worked a second finger in.

Street shook his head, and Hondo saw tears on his face and made a vow to kill every one of these fuckers just as soon as he was able.

“I’m going to do it,” he whispered after the third finger, mouth almost touching Street’s ear, and Street nodded brokenly, shivering harder, as Hondo pulled back a little to line up and work his way inside.

He didn’t want to feel anything as Street froze beneath him, didn’t want the kid’s tight, hot grip on him to set up a steady ache of pleasure in his balls, but it did. He didn’t bother pretending he was going to be okay with that, especially as Street let a sound of pain escape him that he couldn’t hold in.

Hondo was causing that pain, and there was nothing he could do to stop it except by pushing on, going deeper, not wanting to draw it out for the kid’s sake but knowing that every minute he could buy them might be the difference between surviving and dying.

He wouldn’t say ‘living.’ Neither of them was going to have much of a life after this.

When he felt his pelvis touch Street’s ass, he paused to let the kid adjust. Street was shaking hard now, panting between his teeth, sounds punched out of his throat at every minute shift of Hondo’s cock inside of him.

Hondo rested his hands on Street’s hips and adjusted his angle a little, ignoring remarks about what a pro he was, how good this was going to look on the internet.

“I’m going to move,” Hondo said, sliding out a little and then back in, setting an easy rhythm, wincing at the friction—Street was still clenched tight around him, still too dry for smooth action. It had to hurt like a motherfucker, and there was nothing Hondo could do except try to hit the sweet spot.

He wasn’t sure Street would thank him for that—it would be easier to live with this, maybe, if he could pretend he’d gotten no pleasure from it—but he had to try. Street was trembling, on the verge of collapse, his forehead resting on his crossed hands, sweat beginning to bead on the nape of his neck.

Street shifted his stance again, just a touch, and felt Street jerk as he slid over that elusive spot. The sound the kid made this time was worse than pain—surprise and pleasure and then, right after, “No,” slurred but clear.

The crew mocked Street, mocked his pain and his fear and his weakness.

But the kid wasn’t weak; he was stronger than Hondo could ever be, taking it without fighting back, letting Hondo have the lead, keeping them both as safe as he could while Street paid the price.

He didn’t let himself think about how good the kid felt, how the little noises Street couldn’t keep in now, the wounded pleasure in his stifled cries, arced like lightning to his core and filled him up.

He held himself back, the desire to speed up and finish this warring with the need not to hurt Street any further, so he kept up the easy rocking, dragging his cock over the spot inside Street that made him moan, and when Hondo was close, unable to hold back for much longer, he draped himself over Street’s clammy back and reached around to stroke his cock, which grew in his hand from half-hard to full.

“Easy, Street. I’ve got you,” Hondo said, for the kid’s ears only, as he angled his hips for a final thrust and wrenched an orgasm out of Street even as he felt himself spill.

Under him, Street was sobbing against his own arm, muffled cries that the crew, mercifully, couldn’t hear for the raucous noise they were making at this final humiliation of the two helpless men.

Hondo stayed where he was, literally covering Street’s six, one arm around his waist and the other braced against the floor to hold them both up.

Asshole One started slow clapping, and Hondo gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, praying with every ounce of strength he had left in him that Deacon and the others would get here in time and make Street’s sacrifice worth it.

He bent his head for a moment, resting his forehead between Street’s shoulder blades, and said, “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you,” feeling Street tense beneath him as bootsoles scuffed on the floor, signaling that the crew was moving in around them.

“You got what you wanted,” Hondo threw at Asshole One, straining his neck to look up at him but also keep Street covered.

“Not quite,” Asshole One said, pursing his lips in mock-regret as he brought his gun around. “I’m afraid there’s been a slight change of plans.”

Hondo had known that there was no honor in this crew, that they weren’t going to let them live after this, but hearing it was like a cold hand reaching into his chest and squeezing.

He had to take a long breath and hold it for a six-count before he could trust his voice when he said, “You’re dead,” with the steady surety of a man who has an army at his back.

Asshole One’s sneer transformed into alarm as the door to the warehouse blew inward.

Hondo flattened Street to the cold floor beneath him, saying, “Cover your ears,” as he clapped his hands over his own and lightning strobed behind his eyelids.

Even with the cover of his hands, his head was ringing like a bell from the flash-bangs, and the shouts and thunder of guns were a muffled battle someone else was fighting.

The only thought he had was to keep Street safe, so he pressed his weight into him and put a hand on the back of his head, not pushing, just holding, to let Street know Hondo was with him, and they were going to be alright.

He cracked his eyes a little, but all he could make out through the drifting smoke was that three of the crew were down, and at least two more had taken cover, judging by the return fire.

It bothered him that he didn’t know where the remaining two were, but he had to trust his team to keep them safe.

Hondo patted Street’s side to let him know he was easing off of him and then rolled onto his back to pull his pants up. Street was still face-down, unmoving and bare-assed when Hondo rolled back onto his side and put his lips to Street’s ear: “Do you need help with your pants?”

He didn’t want to push the kid, but they needed to be mobile.

Street responded by rolling over and putting his own clothes to right before following Hondo’s lead and pushing up from his hands and knees into a crouch.

“You good?” Hondo asked, and Street nodded, rubbing the back of his hand across his tear-stained face, leaving broad, filthy stripes across his cheeks and nose.

“Moving,” Hondo said, and he ran for the nearest cover, the massive hulk of a machine leaking rust onto the floor.

Street reached his side seconds after Hondo flattened himself against the cold, blessedly solid metal. Street wouldn’t meet his eyes, and Hondo said, “Hey,” to get his attention, signaling with hand gestures what their next move would be.

Hondo could see one of the remaining crew not fifty feet away, creeping around another defunct machine, obviously intending to run away rather than stand and fight to the death with SWAT.

Street nodded, eyes going hard, a coldness steeling over his features, and Hondo said, “On my six,” to remind the kid that they were doing this together.

He got a tight, unhappy nod back as his only answer.

It was almost laughable how easily they got the jump on Grab-Ass, who made a squawk of surprise as Hondo wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him backward until only his toes of his boots scuffed the ground.

Street punched Grab-Ass in the gut, hard, and the fight whooshed out of him with his breath. Hondo tightened his grip until the guy’s hyoid snapped, and he dropped him like the garbage he was.

Street’s eyes were white at the edges, his lips a thin slash across his face, but he didn’t protest Hondo killing the guy in cold blood.

“Us or them,” Hondo said, and Street nodded grimly and picked up Grab-Ass’ gun where it had fallen when Hondo had taken him down.

Hondo took the guy’s ankle piece for his own, and he and Street ghosted away from one machine to hunt in the shadows of others, going deeper into the warehouse, away from the sporadic gunfire still marking the two pinned crew at their backs.

The narrow aisles at the back of the warehouse were dark and crowded with monster machines and splintered crates islanded by mystery spills that stank of chemicals. They walked carefully, skirting the pools where they could, leaping them when they could not.

The back wall loomed up at them, vaguely brighter for the wan light spilling through high, broken windows. Ahead, there was a brighter beam that marked the dusty window of a rear exit door.

Movement broke that column of light, and Hondo raised his gun, firing precisely, his visual no more than a split-second confirmation of a too-familiar shape: Asshole One, who went down with a grunt and stayed down, hand fluttering over his chest as they approached.

He’d fallen into a puddle, and his clothes were already smoking, the stuff eating away at the cloth.

He was too far gone to notice the stench of his own skin burning, though, eyes fixing on some point that neither Hondo nor Street nor anyone in that warehouse could see.

Street’s face was gaunt with fury, lips tight, eyes blazing, when he planted a boot over the neat hole in the middle of the guy’s chest and pressed down.

That eked a wheeze out of the dying man and a momentary recognition, eyes widening as he realized who’d killed him and why.

Then he was gone, just another forgotten wreck leaking fluid onto the reeking floor.

They turned away from him and made their slow, careful way back toward their team. The firefight seemed to be over, no more pop-pop giving away the enemy’s location.

“If they aren’t dead,” Street said, his voice sounding hollow, strange.

“They are,” Hondo promised, feeling it in his bones.

They found Little Hands slumped behind a towering crate, a gory hole where his right eye had been. 

Hondo patted him down, pulled his phone out of his pants pocket, and hit play, watching only for the seconds it took to make sure it was the right footage. Then he held it out to Street, who took it in a shaking hand.

“How’re we playing this, boss?” Street asked, and for a moment, Hondo heard the child Street must have been once, asking his mother for protection against the monster who lived in their house.

Street still wouldn’t look at him, his eyes hovering somewhere in the area of Hondo’s chin, as if he were struggling to read his boss’ lips.

“Are you hurt? I mean, besides,” and Hondo’s hand made a motion to indicate the surface damage—swollen cheek, bruised throat, the abrasions and contusions hiding under Street’s clothes.

Street shook his head, “N-no,” he stammered. “No, I’m fine.” His eyes skittered lower, toward the ground, and Hondo had to resist the urge to touch his chin, raise his eyes and hold them, put his arms around the kid and tell him it would be okay.

He tried not to lie to his team, for one thing, and for another, he didn’t think Street would welcome his touch.

Hondo swallowed hard, a sense memory of Street shuddering under him racing through him suddenly.

It was his turn to work out the words, to try to make them come out without shaking.

“Do you want to keep it between us?”

Street’s gaze at last snapped up to Hondo’s, his eyes wide with surprise and something like hope finally painting a little color across his battered cheeks.

The kid swallowed visibly, nodded reflexively, and then said, “Y-yeah. Yes, pl…”

He stuttered to a halt before begging could take over, and it was Hondo who broke eye contact this time, shame flooding him at what he’d done.

“Okay,” he said at last, reaching out like he would have before, like he’d done a dozen times or more, to touch Street’s shoulder and get him moving.

He stopped, seeing Street’s eyes go wide with something other than surprise. Hondo was saved having to figure out what to say by Deacon’s voice cutting through the tense air.

“Hondo? Street? You okay?”

At the sound of Deke’s voice, Street’s eyes grew wide, and he shoved Little Hands’ phone into his own pocket.

Deacon was backlit by the sunlight pouring through the gap where the front door had been and looked, for a moment, like an avenging angel.

Then he moved toward them, resolving into himself again, gun down, steps sure, eyes scanning them for signs of injury.

“You look like hell,” he noted, worry in his voice and something else, a question that Hondo wasn’t going to answer. “Ambulance is outside.”

Hondo nodded, said, “You go first,” to Street, who moved off like he had a fire under his ass, looking skittish and pale.

“You want to tell me what happened here?” Deacon asked, that gentle confessor’s tone tearing a hole in Hondo’s guts.

Hondo shook his head. “Just the usual—a little roughing up, nothing serious.”

Deacon’s expression said he knew bullshit when he smelled it, but he was too polite to call it out.

Hondo shrugged. “Leave it alone, Deke,” but it came out more like a plea than an order.

Deke put a hand on his shoulder as Hondo passed, halting him, and said low, for his ears only, “You need to talk, I’m here.”

Hondo swallowed around the sick cold lump threatening to choke him and nodded, too full of sorrow and shame even to thank Deacon.

He greeted the rest of the team with nods, his smile tight and painful on his face, and stepped out the door, squinting into the sunlight to find Street, who was sitting in the back of an ambulance being examined by an EMT.

For a second, as the EMT looked around for who to report Street’s condition to, the kid looked up and made eye contact, dropping his chin in a tiny nod and then turning his eyes away, wrenching a smile onto his face and saying something to the EMT, who was a pretty girl with a high, brunette ponytail and a starfish tattoo on the back of her right hand.

Hondo didn’t approach the bus, letting Deacon do the honors, and when Deacon reported back that they were taking Street in for an overnight observation, Hondo said, “Good,” and then, “Nah, I’m fine,” when Deacon followed up with the suggestion that Hondo go with him and get checked out himself.

“You’re not, Boss,” Luca said, startling Hondo, whose situational awareness was obviously shot to shit.

“I’ll _be_ fine,” Hondo corrected, pushing off the doorframe and moving toward his truck. “I just need a shower and some sleep.”

“Let’s get back to the unit, then, so you can get cleaned up and do your preliminary report. Then you can head home for some rest, okay?” Deacon, of course, playing den father, which Hondo was grateful for. Given what he’d used his authority to do today, Hondo would be glad never to have to make another decision in his life.

Shaking off his deep unease, Hondo let himself be steered to Black Betty, Chris offering to drive the Charger back. If he’d thought he could manage the drive without losing focus and possibly putting someone else in harm’s way, Hondo would have avoided being trapped in the SWAT truck with the rest of his team, worry filling all the spaces between them as he rode shotgun and ignored the attempts at concern disguised as banter.

Back at the unit, he debriefed in his filthy clothes, shaking his head when Deacon offered to give him time to shower and eat something.

He wanted to go home, to put some distance between himself and the job.

He almost made it, too, had his hand on the down button for the elevator that would take him to the garage, when Jess’ voice stopped him.

“Were you going to run out of here without checking in?” She asked it in her teasing boss voice, like he was a subordinate whom she kept on a long leash and needed now and then to remind of his place.

They played the game like that, and usually, Hondo didn’t mind. Right now, though, he didn’t think he could take the concern hiding behind the professional façade, the warmth in her look that said she’d swing by later to check on him.

“Sorry, Captain,” he said, trying to master his expression, smooth it out into that charming, rueful look he usually wore when she called him out for some misstep.

He saw the way her expression shifted as she heard her title on his lips, her own mouth going a little tight, her eyes a little hard. He was putting her off, warning her away, and she didn’t like it.

He knew he’d hurt her, but he couldn’t help it. He was a bomb waiting to go off, a gun with a hair trigger.

He needed time and space, and he couldn’t tell her why.

“I’m just anxious to get home and clean up,” he explained, dropping into parade rest and fixing his eyes on a mark over her right shoulder.

She frowned, mouth opening like she wanted to push him, but she changed her mind.

“Carry on, then, Sergeant,” she said. “And once you’ve given your full report, I’d like you to take a day or two off, you and Street. You need the rest.”

His mind balked at all that free time, time in which he’d have nothing to do but remember what Street felt like under him. Something oily and cold snaked up his throat, and he swallowed, nodded, said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and stepped into the elevator, which had dinged open at that moment.

 _Saved by the bell_ , he thought, recognizing shock and hysteria as they bubbled up inside him with the bile he was choking back.

He made it to the garage, to a damp, stinking corner out of sight of the cameras, and retched out a thin stream of bitter yellow, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and making his shaky way toward the Charger, grateful to find the keys in it and a note from Chris in her tight, no-nonsense scrawl: “Safe and sound.”

That made him laugh, a short, sharp sound: The car was in better shape than he was.

The drive home was a blur, and he found himself standing in his front hallway, keys hanging from his limp fingers, unsure what to do first.

After long, dumb moments of stupor, Hondo headed for the bathroom, stripping off his filthy clothes and leaving them in a heap on the tile floor.

That was the last thing he managed with his remaining brainpower, running the shower on automatic, keeping his eyes closed against the stinging water, disassociating from his own hands on his body to try not to feel his skin—or anything at all.

He put on boxer briefs, sleep pants, and a tee-shirt, more clothing than he ever wore to bed unless he was sick, and crawled under the covers, wanting nothing so much as total oblivion.

Hondo didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when a noise woke him. He came up out of bed and onto the floor on toes and fingers, reaching for the piece he kept in his bedside table drawer, the one Jess used to tease him about.

His heart was hammering against his ribs, the pulse in his throat almost choking him, when he registered that his face was wet, and he realized he’d been crying in his sleep.

He put the gun away, wiped a hand impatiently over his face, and blew out a few hard breaths, telling himself it wasn’t like he’d been… 

He had no reason to be panicking. 

Still, though he could see now from his phone that it was only a little after three in the morning, Hondo knew sleep was done with him for the night. He wandered into the kitchen, fixed coffee he didn’t really taste after the first sip seared his mouth.

Early as it was and despite the steady throbbing of his many bruises, Hondo decided to head into the unit, hoping to spend some time with the heavy bag, beat himself loose and easy, dispel the last of the deep, frantic unease that was chewing at his acidy stomach.

Of course, the only person in the locker room was Jim Street.

The kid froze in the act of pulling his tee-shirt on and then, as if Hondo had tased him, jerked a little and tugged the shirt down the rest of the way. The pause had been long enough for Hondo to take in the tapestry of abrasions and bruises across his ribs and belly, and Hondo winced in empathy—his own torso felt like he’d been horse-kicked.

“I thought you were being kept overnight,” he said, keeping his voice light—not accusing, just observing.

Street shrugged in answer. “Checked myself out.” He was quiet, keeping his eyes to himself, and Hondo felt suddenly like it was wrong for him to be here with Street, alone like this. Then he had to suppress a sudden sharp flash of incendiary anger for being put in a position to feel like that at all.

Weariness followed like a heavy wave after the fury, and he said, “I’ll come back,” already turning back toward the door.

“Nah, it’s alright,” Street said, though his voice was still quiet, and he still wouldn’t look at Hondo.

“You sure? I understand if you need—”

“I said I’m fine,” Street said, louder this time and through his teeth.

“Okay,” Hondo answered, holding up his hands in surrender. “I just figured…”

“What, that I wouldn’t like you looking at me? That I was worried about you seeing me half-naked?”

There was a sick snarl in Street’s voice now, and he was, at last, meeting Hondo’s gaze, but Hondo wished that he weren’t because there was nothing in his eyes but loathing—for himself, yeah, and for Hondo too.

“Look, kid—”

“Don’t call me that! I’m not a kid!”

Hondo’s hands went up again, as if he could hold back the wave of anger and recrimination roaring toward him. His guts twisted in cold knots, Hondo took a step back, giving Street more space.

“I’ll come back, okay? If you’re sure you’re alright—”

“You don’t have to leave!” Street cried, his voice breaking on the last word. His eyes were wet and wide, his mouth open, as if he was trying to find more words but nothing would come.

“Okay,” Hondo said softly. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll just stay here, and we can talk, okay?”

Street’s head shook back and forth, back and forth, in a way that said he didn’t even realize he was doing it, but he said, “Okay,” at last, raggedly, and slumped onto a bench.

Hondo took a seat at the end of a bench on the opposite side of the aisle, mostly so he wouldn’t be looming in Street’s periphery.

He felt a pain in his hands and looked down to see that he was white-knuckling the edge of the bench, hard enough to leave angry white lines across his palms at the joints. 

The silence between them grew ominous with unspoken tension, and Hondo was about to break it when Street said, “I don’t know how to…” 

There was a pause, long enough that Hondo wondered if he was done talking, and then Street finished the thought, “Put it away. I can’t seem to get past it.”

Hondo waited until he was pretty sure there was nothing else coming before he offered, “I don’t think you’re supposed to just walk it off, Street. I think this kind of… I think trauma sticks with you. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.”

At his last words, Street’s shoulders hunched like he was expecting a blow, and he shook his head again, this time a short, jerking motion, and snorted.

“You _would_ say that.”

“Which part?” Hondo wondered, keeping his voice even.

“That there’s nothing to be ashamed of. You weren’t the one on your hands and knees taking it up the ass, were you?”

Again, something cold and liquid roiled in Hondo’s gut. 

“Is that what you think?” Hondo asked, trying to keep the coldness in his gut from seeping into his voice. Street was hurt and afraid, and Hondo turning on him because he was exhibiting some ugliness wouldn’t do either of them any good.

Street shot him a look.

“You think a man who takes it should be ashamed of himself?” His throat ached, and Hondo wanted nothing more than to walk away from this conversation, but he guessed they had to have it sometime, and now was probably better than later, at least for Street’s sake.

Street looked away, his mouth twisting as he struggled through some feeling he didn’t want to show Hondo.

“The others—,” Street started, but Hondo jumped in.

“First, the team will have our backs no matter what we tell them,” and he let a little steel into his voice because he wasn’t going to let the kid put this on the team, who hadn’t done anything to deserve Street’s suspicions.

He softened his tone for the next part. “Second, no one needs to know if you don’t want them to. If and when we decide to bring this out, we do it together. Alright?”

Street bobbed his head once, said, “Copy,” without looking at Hondo.

“Third: Do you think those people are right who’d have a problem with either of us ‘taking it’?” It was a leading question, phrased so it would be hard for Street to argue, but Hondo was making a point here, and he needed it to be heard.

“No,” Street answered at last, his voice a hoarse whisper.

“Then what _are_ you ashamed of, exactly?” Hondo pushed, wondering if this was the right way of handling it, feeling like he was in way over his head.

Street still wouldn’t look at him, and that’s something Hondo couldn’t have, not if they were going to get somewhere with this conversation.

“Look at me, Street,” and when the kid complied, though his eyes were red and his throat was bobbing like he was trying to keep from throwing up, Hondo went on: “What are you ashamed of?”

Street tore his eyes away again, hunching over on himself, swallowing hard enough that Hondo heard his throat click, and then he said something that Hondo couldn’t hear.

“Say that again?” he asked gently.

“I liked it.”

Hondo wasn’t surprised to hear it; after all, he’d made it a point to pull an orgasm out of Street just to make the whole thing easier on him. Now he wondered if that hadn’t been a tactical error, especially if the kid thought that the mechanics of it made him somehow gay.

So, he shared with Street what his eighth-grade coach had taught him about hydraulics and involuntary responses to stimuli.

But halfway through his explanation, Street started shaking his head again, his jaw firming, shoulders going back.

“No,” he said, as soon as Hondo stumbled to a halt, his concentration shot by the grim, determined expression on Street’s face.

“That’s not what it was,” Street said, like he was confessing to planting evidence or roughing up a witness. “I’m not letting you take all the blame.”

“There’s no blame here, Street, except for the assholes who did this to us.”

“Yeah, _us_ , Boss. That’s what I mean. We were _both_ there. It happened to you too. And we both…” He made a helpless gesture between them that Hondo couldn’t parse. “We both came,” he said at last, in a broken, rushed whisper.

Hondo wondered if that’s what Street was really getting at—that Hondo shared some blame for what Street had felt when Hondo had…

Even in his head, he couldn’t finish the thought. He didn’t want to put a name to what he’d done to Street—what had been done to them both.

“It wasn’t ra—” Street stammered into nervous silence. The fingers of his right hand were worrying at a ding in the hard plastic of the bench. Hondo thought the kid didn’t even know he was doing it.

“It wasn’t rape if we both liked it,” he said at last, raising his eyes to meet Hondo’s as he did. It was the bravest thing Hondo had ever seen, and it broke his heart.

“That’s not how it works, Street. You didn’t consent, so—”

“Neither did you,” Street interrupted, holding Hondo’s eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” Hondo conceded. “The point is, we didn’t have a choice. We had no control over what happened to us.”

“We could have let them kill us,” Street noted, but though he sounded belligerent, he was looking away from Hondo again.

“You think that would’ve been better? You’d rather be dead than let me—”

“No!” Street cried, and then he dropped his voice, saying, “No,” again. “I just wish…”

There was a world of lost chances in his voice, and it made Hondo suddenly sadder and more tired than he’d already been.

“You wish what?” Hondo pushed, needing to know.

Street looked at him again, swallowed hard, and said, so quiet Hondo had to strain to hear him over the roaring of the blood in his ears, “I wish we could’ve done it some other way.”

Ridiculously, Hondo had a moment of wondering if Street meant their relative positions during the assault, and then the penny dropped and hope like a bolt of electricity shot through him, and he had to take a steadying breath before he could answer.

“Are you saying…?” he tried, trailing off, unsure of how to put the question into words.

Street saved him the trouble. He gave a one-shouldered shrug and looked away, then quickly back again, and said, “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

“I need to hear the words, Street,” Hondo said, thinking about consent and chain of command and team dynamics and a host of other things but mostly thinking about hope and what it could do to a person—tear him up, bring him down, take him apart and put him back together.

Hondo was clutching the bench again, trying to keep from shaking. He felt like he might be sick, and he swallowed a few times around the sour lump in the back of his throat.

“I’m not saying I liked what happened to us,” Street said at last, eyes darting to and away from Hondo’s face as he spoke. “I’m saying maybe I’d have liked our first time to be more…private. And, uh, less painful.”

Hondo realized he was the one who’d started nodding like a dashboard Jesus and stopped only with some effort. He felt short of breath, like someone had punched him in the diaphragm.

Finally, he managed, “How long have you felt this way? About me, I mean.”

“Pretty much since day one,” Street confessed, a blush giving his pallor some color at last.

Hondo’s world reeled, and he gripped the bench even tighter, feeling like he might pitch forward and fall forever if he didn’t hold on tight. 

There were things he was supposed to say in this situation, he knew—knew in general, not as if he’d had this precise experience.

He was Street’s boss, so there was an imbalance of power.

He had been Street’s assaulter, so there might be some Stockholm-adjacent effects to take into account.

He also had to consider that he was the only one in the world who knew Street’s secret, which gave him a different kind of emotional authority, one he couldn’t just dismiss.

And then there was the fact that he didn’t hate what Street had confessed; in fact, it had kindled a little flame in his belly, sending tendrils of heat through him and easing the nausea threatening to undo him.

Hondo cleared his throat, prelude to words he couldn’t seem to formulate.

Street spoke before Hondo got there: “It’s okay if you don’t…feel…”

Street’s hesitation decided him.

“I do,” Hondo said, forcing himself to look at the kid and let him see the truth of his words in his eyes. “I do feel the same way about you. But I’m not sure—”

“…that I’m ready for it, all things considered?” Street asked, the corner of his mouth quirking in the palest imitation of his usual smart-ass grin.

“Yeah,” Hondo said, nodding. “And I may not be ready either. I mean…”

“We both have shit to work through,” Street enunciated, a strength in his voice that thrilled Hondo to hear. He thought it meant the kid would be okay, with or without him. 

He was selfish enough to hope it was the former and not the latter.

“So, I have a friend. She’s good with trauma. I think she’d work with us, if you’re interested,” Hondo offered.

Street nodded, blew out a breath, smile growing a little more real as it stole over his face. He still looked tired and lost, like he was hurting inside and out, but his shoulders weren’t hunched anymore, and he was able to meet Hondo’s look head-on, with no hesitation.

“I’ll see if she’s free for later today,” Hondo pushed, and Street said, “Okay.”

“You eat at all?” he asked.

Street made a face. “Hospital food?”

“Right, get your jacket. I’m taking you out to breakfast.”

Street rose, hand pausing halfway to his locker. Then he dropped it, shoulders going back and squaring off, mouth firm, eyes determined as he crossed the few feet separating them and stopped with the toes of his boots almost touching Hondo’s.

Street looked up at him, waiting, as Hondo’s heart bucked in his chest and fear sluiced through him. Then he raised his arms, slowly, and wrapped them around Street, pulling him in, careful of his injuries and mindful not to go too fast.

Street leaned into him, pressed against him, making a muffled sound against his shoulder, and Hondo tightened his hold, dropping his nose to the nape of Street’s neck, taking a deep, centering breath.

As far as he was concerned, he’d have stayed that way forever, comforting and being comforted, letting the heat and strength of Street’s body warm him up and strengthen him too.

The kid’s stomach growled loudly, though, and they broke apart, Street’s grin infectious as he cuffed Hondo on the shoulder and headed for the door.

Hondo wasn’t fool enough to believe that they were okay; there were days and months ahead of them fraught with pitfalls he couldn’t anticipate and pain he couldn’t take away. 

But for the immediate future, they had a plan—breakfast and then making their separate reports, and then therapy, if Hondo’s friend was available.

They could take a few days to get used to a routine of meals and conversations and sessions together and alone.

Coming back to work would be hard, explaining to Jess harder.

Hondo took a breath, holding it for a six-count while he watched Street stride confidently ahead of him. 

The kid paused at the exterior door, looking back at Hondo with expectation lighting his face. 

Hondo let go of tomorrow in favor of living in the moment, knowing that they were both safe, that they had each other’s backs, and that they could wait for the right time to find out what the world would let them have.

It would have to be enough for now.


End file.
